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Dear School Leaders,
Thank you to all the schools that joined our IDEA Consultation webinar with the NYCPS Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning (DIAL). We are deeply grateful to DIAL leadership for preparing and delivering an extremely informative and comprehensive session.
While this webinar was presented for Brooklyn schools, the information applies equally to all boroughs. We strongly recommend that any school that has been invited to a consultation meeting review the webinar.
Click here for the recording and PowerPoint!
If your school is not located in Brooklyn, and after viewing the webinar you feel it would be helpful to have a session that includes representatives from your local CSE, please fill out this form to let us know. This will help us assess the need for borough-specific follow-up webinars.
Key Takeaways for Schools:
1. Request a full roster of your students with IESPs:
We recommend that each school request from NYCPS a complete list of all students enrolled in your school who have an IESP.
This allows you to:
- Ensure that every eligible child is receiving the services they are entitled to;
- Support parents in navigating annual reviews and submitting the PNI;
- Ensure that no student “falls through the cracks” due to missing records or misalignment between DOE and school data.
2. School-specific consultation meetings are required for every school:
As mentioned in our previous update, while Agudath Israel and the Standing Committee represent the collective interests of schools in ongoing discussions with NYCPS on systemwide policy and implementation issues, we are not able to represent individual schools at their school-specific consultation meetings.
Every school must participate in its own school-specific meeting because:
- These meetings focus on verifying student rosters and school-level data;
- NYCPS is not permitted to discuss student-level information with Standing Committee representatives;
- Only school staff have the specific knowledge needed to explain the school’s service models, staffing, and capacity;
- NYCPS requires confirmation of school records to satisfy federal Child Find and compliance obligations.
Please see page 6 of the PowerPoint linked above, which outlines which matters may be discussed with a Standing Committee representative and which issues must be discussed directly with school personnel.
We intend to release a IDEA/Special Education update in the coming days.
However, we wanted to alert schools immediately about the following:
NYCPS has begun sending emails regarding pathways to service for children who did not submit a timely PNI for the current school year.
We are reviewing this very carefully and will provide detailed guidance shortly.
As always, please feel free to reach out to our Parent Navigators at 212-797-9000 extension 327 or [email protected] with any questions regarding special education services for students in your school.
We will continue working closely with NYCPS to support you through this new consultation process.
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